US Customs and Border Protection is hiring private investigators to locate deported immigrants and others who've left the United States, then demand they pay the government money they allegedly owe, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. The program, called Tracing and Payment Recovery Services, targets people in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and potentially other nations. Contractors will verify where each person lives through commercial data and physical surveillance, then deliver government-approved flyers listing fines and fees CBP claims they owe.
The records cap the program at $9 million over two years and require "commercial data verification and physical observation services" to confirm addresses, WIRED reports. Photos of the home count as acceptable proof, as do utility bills, employment records, court papers, or death certificates if the person has died. The Department of Homeland Security says it has issued more than $84 billion in fines to immigrants accused of failing to leave the country, citing an obscure provision from a 1996 immigration law that went unused until Donald Trump's first presidency. Those penalties run at $998 per day for up to five years against people still in the country, with some totaling up to $1.8 million. By July, the government had removed an estimated 66,387 people carrying unpaid CBP fines and penalties, and the three debt collection agencies CBP already employs had failed to locate a single person outside the US despite attempting contact by letter and phone.
Legal experts quoted in the WIRED report describe the program as an intimidation tactic designed to evade due process. Alina Das, a law professor and director of NYU's Immigrant Rights Clinic, calls pursuing people who've already left the country with outstanding fines a "significant escalation in tactics." A recent NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic report found that immigrants accused of failing to depart have had tax returns seized, wages garnished, and credit scores destroyed after receiving fine notices. Hasan Shafiqullah, the Legal Aid Society's immigration supervising attorney, says some third-party collection agencies pile on $500,000 in additional administrative fees beyond the government's charges.
DHS pledges to forgive failure-to-depart fines if people self-deport using the CBP Home app, but the waiver doesn't cover a separate $5,130 fee Congress created last year for people ordered removed in absentia and later arrested by ICE—a charge the statute prohibits from being waived or reduced. Charles Moore, a senior attorney at Public Justice, says the move is "part and parcel" with the Trump administration's harsh anti-immigration efforts and likely aims to discourage people in the targeted countries from wanting to come to the US in the future. Contractors are required to deliver printed flyers, approved by the US government and printed in both English and Spanish, listing the fines CBP claims each person owes, and the government will accept any documentation it considers "relevant and credible" as proof of residence. The foreign ministries of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras didn't respond to questions about whether the United States consulted them or whether they would cooperate with the contractors—raising questions about enforcement in sovereign nations and the practical reach of a program that's already collected nothing despite $84 billion in claimed debt. For companies operating across borders, the precedent of extraterritorial debt collection backed by surveillance infrastructure may signal a willingness to extend enforcement mechanisms well beyond traditional jurisdictional boundaries, regardless of diplomatic coordination or international norms.